You might have heard Sci Fi Wire spun off from the Sci Fi Channel, but what does it really mean for the longstanding news source? We asked the man in charge.

According to Craig Engler, senior vice president of SciFi.com, Sci Fi Wire will still be a part of the Sci Fi Channel, following its spin-off earlier this week, and the channel hasn't sold the newswire or anything.

When we say spin-off we mean it's become a stand-alone site and no longer a sub-section of SCIFI.COM. Although it's still fully integrated into SCIFI.COM, it lives at its own URL and has its own personality... To borrow a TV term, it's still "owned and operated" by Sci Fi, but the URL and design have changed, and the content is being expanded.

The move should allow Sci Fi Wire, which launched in 1997, to grow more quickly, hopes Engler:

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We've been talking about spinning off the Wire as its own site for the last few years to accommodate its continuous growth in traffic, as well as interest from advertisers. Like our tech blog DVICE.COM — which started off life as a sub-section of SCIFI.COM called Sci Fi Tech — the Wire had grown to the point where it seemed like it would work better as s stand-alone site. Simply having its own URL instead of being a slash-something off of SCIFI.COM makes a huge impact. We expect existing readers to enjoy a lot of new content, and new people to find us more easily. So far it's working, because we launched at 1 p.m. on Monday and even though we were only up for 11 hours on our first day, we doubled traffic from our daily average last month.

In any case, the continued link between the Sci Fi Channel and the newswire certainly can't hurt, as the presence of exclusive clips from Battlestar Galactica and its spinoff show Caprica prove.